Levi, Rosalyn & friends become better artists by drawing one picture a day.

Month: December 2011

Ok, here’s the last print. This is the last one that I drew and the one I had the least amount of time to work on before I sent them off to the printer in time for Christmas.

Thanks for bearing with me as I roll these prints out. Thank you to everyone for saying such nice things about them. Honestly, I have very mixed feelings showing these. I am nowhere close to where I want to be as an artist. I am still in kindergarden and it’s going to be a long time for I can play ball with the seniors. At the same time, I’ve been attempting to improve my drawing on this blog for nearly two years; progress has been slow but I think I’ve seen progress.

Here’s the second in the series of Christmas prints for Suzanne. When I was working on ideas this was the first concept I sketched out and oddly enough it proved to be the most difficult to execute. I had a really hard time getting the levels and colors right. I like the final result though.

Another big inspiration for these drawings was a favorite childhood book that I now read to my kids: The Big Golden Book of Poetry. The illustrator was a woman named Gertrude Elliott (Espenscheid) who appears to have illustrated a number of children’s books in the 40s and 50s. There’s something about her illustrations that I find very appealing and unique. Maybe it’s the simplicity without being cartoonish. I also love her choices of colors. I found some scans of her work on flickr but dedicated collections of her work and biographical information about her are not to be found. It’s a shame, I would like see more of her illustrations. She had a special eye.

Here’s the first picture I teased a few weeks ago. This was the first in a series of artwork that I did as Christmas gift for Suzanne. This one’s called “Across the River”, inspired by the excellent Peter Gabriel song.

As far as the composition goes, it draws heavily from Maxfield Parrish to the point that it’s almost a blatent rip-off. Everything, from the use of the golden ratio for the division of the compositional elements, to the city architecture, to even (most blatantly) a girl on a rock is Maxield Parrish. But this isn’t really surprising to anyone who knows me. One constant in my life has been my love of his art. To this day I feel a peaceful excitement when I look at his work. They are scenes that I want to be in. So, I figure, as long as I’m imitating, why not imitate something I love. Obviously, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of his skill, but of all the artists I’m grateful to, he sits in the top row.